Digital Africa – Tokyo

YaPhoto is pleased to announce the participants of Digital Africa – Tokyo, a screening of videos by 12 African and Diaspora artists, Saturday 12 August at OGU MAG gallery.

The artists were selected from an open call launched last June as part of the year-long programme of events and international collaborations developed by YaPhoto, Cameroon’s platform for photography and lens-based art practices.

Presented in two parts, the screening will begin with Dama (2015), a Dogon ceremony filmed by Tiécoura N’daou while Amine Oulmakki’s Oxygène (2015) presenting 9 submerged video portraits convey the idea of water as an element essential to life but also a potential source of asphyxiation.
Forming part of a triptych addressing the rise of obscurantism in Tunisia, Mouna Jemal Siala’s Le Fils (2015) is a visual metaphor of a mother’s fear of losing her son to indoctrination. Rehema Chachage’s Flower (2014) and Mounir Allaoui’s Koif (2013) speak to the politics behind body care and aesthetics: from the henna ritual that contributes to persisting patriarchal oppression and objectification of women’s bodies, to the narrative inscribed within black hair. This first part will end with Edem Dotse & SUTRA’s two-part experimental music film Waves/The Water (2017) exploring notions of God, womanhood, identity, spirituality, suffering and healing.

In part two, Emo de MedeirosKaleta/Kaleta (2016) and Ruy César CamposEntangled Landing Points (2017) highlight interconnections between Africa and South America from common cultures inherited from slavery to contemporary global networks and infrastructures. Departing from the transatlantic legacy, N’daou’s Les Naufragésde la Méditerranée (2015) evokes moments of hesitations before ‘diving’ into the Mediterranean in search for the European Eldorado, while Allaoui’s M’Pambé register the ‘casual’ occurrence of under-aged domestic workers in the Comoros.Lebohang Kganye’s animations Pied Piper’s Voyage (2014) and Ke sale teng (2017) revisit her family history and archive to retrace and reinterpret both personal and collective histories. By performing a male character (her grandfather) she is symbolising the roles black South African women had to take on during apartheid because of absent male figures.Lemia Monet Bodden’s Glance (2014) draws on personal experience to create the tableau of a black woman’s loneliness within an urban landscape. The screening will conclude with Megan-Leigh Heilig’s short film Everything Will Be Alright (2017), taking the viewers on a journey in the city of Cape Town, with a particular focus on mobility, sexuality and race.

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Digital Africa (Tokyo):Saturday 12 Aug, 5.00-7.00 pm.

This screening is part of YaPhoto@Arakawa Africa, a collaborative three-day event organised by Arakawa Africa, OGU MAG, YaPhoto and Making Histories Visible (University of Central Lancashire).